


Timekeeper

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [37]
Category: The 100 (TV), Timekeeper Series - Tara Sim
Genre: Crossover, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 20:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12175878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: Watchtowers control the time flow in Arkadia. When a tower falls, the whole area gets frozen in time.Why then are people protesting against them? Can't they see?Without the towers, there is no time. No time is like being dead.





	Timekeeper

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I have not read the Timekeeper Series - I have heard it's not all that good, to begin with. But I owed a friend of mine a Braven fic and the concept of the story just popped up when I was reading the Timekeeper reviews on Goodreads. So I apologize to all the fans of the series and to the author of said books for that.

Raven stops just short of the gray wall that separates her timezone from the frozen one, the remains of the broken tower frozen mid-collapse.

 

In front of her, not three feet away, a young woman is bent over, her long skirts puddled in a way that makes her look like one of the elaborate cupcakes in Alpha District. Her pale long-fingered hand stretched to pick up a fallen handkerchief. Beside her a handsome man, in worn woolen clothes is frozen mid-step, head slightly cocked towards her, soft gaze lost not quite on the girl.

 

Standing so close to the gray wall, her skin tingles. She hates frozen zones, but much like the witness to a horrible accident, Raven cannot make herself look away.

 

The pair is but two of the hundreds of people trapped in the gray dome-like haze of the frozen timezone. Raven doesn’t know their names, where they were going or what they were talking about. Only that their time has stopped forever and they'll never reach their destination. The man's boot will never touch the ground. The girl's hand will never reach the handkerchief. His eyes will never find her.

 

Raven’s eyes flit again to the crumbling tower in the distance. Nausea churns in her stomach, bile coating the back of her throat.

 

Taking a deep breath, the mechanic backs slowly away, hands clammy on the handles of her bicycle. Her bad leg throbs painfully as she starts pedaling.

 

The whole predicament with frozen timezones is that no one can get in or out and thus nobody can investigate why the tower collapsed. Raven knows this, but still, she comes back every day. Still, stares at the tower asking herself if she could have done something.

 

It should have been her inside that tower, trying to get that stupid thing back to work. But Finn had come to get her. Raven's mother had been taken to the hospital. Raven never had much love for her mom and would’ve gladly stayed in the tower with her master until the problem was solved, but Sinclair had insisted. “I am perfectly capable of changing a handful of cogs on my own, Reyes." His voice was kind and goodnatured. "Go.”

 

Raven doesn’t remember what she answered – probably something grumpy and sassy because Sinclair always laughed at that and let her get away with being cheeky.

 

 

She should never have left the tower. Should have known something was amiss, should have felt it. She's the one who can feel time like the clothes on her back. But she hadn't. Sinclair paid the price for it.

 

Something just beneath her skin makes her shudder every time Raven changes time zones. She’s grown used to it after so many years going all over the city to fix the different clock towers.

 

Most people stay in their timezone. The workers in the lower districts 4 to 12 have been known to get cardiac arrests when leaving their timezones.

 

Crossing areas is, for the lower classes with their weaker immune systems, hazardous. The inhabitants of higher districts 1-3 have a better health and are more resilient. Also, they’re trained to be able to cross zones. That's why most of the mechanics come from the higher districts.

 

Raven is a rare exception in that regard. For one she can feel time, when working she can nearly taste it, finding the cogs in the clocks that keep it from flowing smoothly. For the other, she shouldn’t be able to cross timezones with such ease since she was born in district 6, commonly known as Factory District. Nobody has been able to tell her how she got her abilities, nor why her heart hasn’t failed yet. God knows Raven didn’t get it from the alcoholic waste of space that was her mother.

Sinclair took her in and trained her, even though most mechanics sneered at the thought of a low-class kid learning the honorable trade.

 

Raven parks her bike at the entrance fence to the Mechanics’ Headquarters: a beautifully manicured white mansion in district 2 built around this timezone’s clock tower. Alpha District's and this one are the only watchtowers built in beautiful white marble, with statues crowning the roof and complicated iron hands decorating the face.

 

Time in this zone hums slowly, lazily, like the long caress of a silk shawl – not that Raven has ever had a silk shawl - it seems to go on forever. It’s soothing and relaxing after the quick pace the lower districts have.

 

She climbs the front steps slowly, her leg giving her way more grief than usual. At the door stands Miller, who opens it for her with a shallow bow.

 

“Who did you piss off to get butler duty?”

 

“Pike," he grumbles with an exaggerated sigh.

 

Raven hasn’t had much contact with the new captain of the guard, but his reputation as a ruthless bastard precedes him. “Ouch.”

 

“Yeah, tell me about it.” The young man smiles at her. She’s already in the large foyer when Miller calls after her: “Remember the clips.”

 

Raven frowns, looks down and finds she’s still wearing the trouser clips around her ankles. “Thanks, Miller.” She unclasps them – it takes a little more effort to reach the one on her bad leg – and stuffs them into her coat pockets as she walks hurriedly down the marble corridor.

 

The mansion is beautiful in that expensive and inaccessible way that makes her feel dirty and inappropriate.

 

A small copper plate with the name Dr. C. Griffin printed in bold black letters marks the seventh door to her right. Raven raps her knuckles on the polished wood and enters the office without waiting for a reply.

 

Like every other room in the mansion, this one is furnished with massive bookshelves along the walls, a dark desk in front of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the manicured gardens. To the door's right a small unmarked door that leads to the adjacent room where physical exams take place; to the left a small sitting area with leather couches and a small glass table. Dr. C. Griffin stumbles to her feet from one of the sofas, her personal bodyguard isn't quite as quick.

 

"Miss Reyes," the doctor clears her throat, stepping quickly towards the mechanic, her professional smile plastered on her face. "Please come in. Take a seat."

 

Raven does not arch an eyebrow at how close they were sitting, or at the fact that the bodyguard's trenchcoat is all crooked. Whatever weird things they engage in are none of her business. She only wants to go back to work.

 

Dr. Griffin moves quickly behind her desk, her eyes wandering only briefly to her bodyguard. The sun streaming in through the windows making her blond hair look like a holy halo around her head. “Please take a seat," she says turning firmly to the mechanic. "Mr. Kane has told me you should be ready to go back to the field? Are you feeling up to it?”

 

Raven has personally known Dr. Griffin for five years now, even though everyone knows about Alpha District's princess. Daughter to the King's top Time Advisors and betrothed to the Crown Prince, she has fought nail and tooth to get to work as a doctor. Only getting her wish because the Crown Prince is soft-hearted and will indulge her.

 

Raven thought she was just a spoilt brat until five years ago she saved her life after a stray bullet left her crippled. The doctor is competent, knows when to shut up and is smarter than her blond hair, and baby blue eyes would have you think. The mechanic appreciates all of those traits.

 

What she doesn't appreciate is having to go through yet another health exam before she's allowed back into the towers.

 

Raven is perfectly healthy, except for her leg everything works as it should. And there's nothing anyone can do about that stupid leg anyway, so...

 

They go through the usual drill:

The doc asks her if she's sleeping, if she has nightmares, if she's eating, what and how often, if she has gone into a tower since the "incident" if her ability to feel the time has suddenly disappeared or changed in any way. Raven answers what the doctor needs to hear: yes, no, yes, I don't know, every 4 to 5 hours; no, no it's the same as always.

 

The doctor watches her, taking notes with her simple, black pen, sighs and guides her to the adjacent room for the physical examination. It is done quickly and efficiently, much like everything else Dr. Griffin does.

 

“All right,” says the doctor. “That will be all. You can dress now.”

 

Raven hops off the cot and wanders behind the screen to pull the shirt and pants back on. “What’s the verdict, doc? Am I good to go?”

 

“Well. You’re still a terrible liar, and I think you should get help. I wouldn’t recommend starting again just yet.”

 

The mechanic looks around the screen at the blonde. She’s busy straightening stuff on her counter. “I am going mental sitting on my behind all day.”

 

“I also think you should go to a retreat in one of the higher districts. Some change in pace would do you some good.”

 

“You have to be kidding.”

 

Something metallic clatters noisily on the wooden counter. “Your health is important, Raven," says the doctor tersely.

 

“Then let me go back to work, Princess,” the mechanic bites her tongue, but it’s too late. Griffin's spine has gone rigid.

 

Everyone who knows Doctor Clarke Griffin knows how much she hates that moniker, and Raven knows her pretty well after so long.

 

But despite their differences, they’re both two women who have fought their way up the ladder, who have broken the conventions and social standards to pursue their careers.

 

“I will give my professional opinion to Director Kane. Please wait outside.”

 

Raven isn’t sure what to say to make it better, so she slinks out to sits on one of the uncomfortable wooden benches lining the hall corridors. When the doctor steps out of the office, closely followed by her bodyguard, she doesn’t even look at Raven. It takes a long time for her to come back and she is clearly not happy. “Director Kane wants to talk to you.”

 

“Doc I...” she looks at the other woman feeling at a loss for words. The doctor’s blue stare is icy.

 

“Good day, Ms. Reyes.”

 

****

 

When the mechanic enters his office, Kane’s expression is tired, his shoulders slumped and the corners of his mouth downturned. The morning paper has been carelessly pushed aside and partly fallen to the ground, the big sheets pooled at the desk’s feet. Six or seven report folders lay open in front of the director. He eyes them like they have personally offended him. Which might as well be the case, considering the increased malfunctions of the watchtowers all over Arkadia. It takes Director Kane a minute or two to notice Raven standing by the door.

 

“Ah, Ms. Reyes. Please come in.”

 

He closes all the manila folders but one. “I have talked to doctor Griffin. Please take a seat.” He gestures to the green leather chair across from him. “She has told me that you’re eager to return to work and that she doesn’t see a reason to keep you from your job.”

 

“Thank you, Director.”

 

He nods, scratching his bearded cheek. “Still. I’d prefer if you’d take it easy for now. Your safety and health are precious to us. There is no need to rush your recovery.” Judging by the stack of reports on Kane’s desk, Raven would argue that there is. But she just wants to get back into the towers, smooth the wrinkles in time she can feel like gravel under her skin. “So I've selected a small assignment for you. I assume you are very familiar with this particular tower.”

 

He turns the folder for Raven to read the report. She is familiar with it: it’s the tower from her timezone. Her mother’s one-room apartment was three streets away from it. This is the tower where Sinclair first found her. She snuck inside all the time when she was a kid. This is where Finn kissed her for the first time. The mechanic had lost count of how many hours she's spent inside learning everything there is to know about the cogs way before she became a mechanic.

Raven frowns. It is a pretty straightforward cleaning duty. “No problem.”

 

“Don’t skip protocol on this one, Raven. I want a full report.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “You got it, Director.” His smile is kind, and Raven hurries out of the room before the man can try and talk feelings. She isn’t sure why all these High Timers are always so keen on opening up and sharing what, for all intents and purposes, is completely private.

 

***

 

When Raven was little, she often had the sensation that time passed way too quickly in her district. It rubbed on her skin the wrong way and made her feel dizzy. Then, one day, after her mother had thrown a glass milk bottle at her head, Raven finally broke into the watchtower. Only mechanics are allowed inside because the mechanism is too complicated and too delicate for regular people to understand it.

 

Inside the tower, time flowed differently. It was slower, allowing her time to think and look around. She spent what felt like hours inside. But when she finally came out, only a few minutes had passed.

 

Raven went back many times in the following weeks and always felt the shift in time. How it extended and dilated all around her, allowing her as much time as she wanted, while outside everything seemed to stand still.

 

The mechanic stops her bike at the entrance of the Clock Square. There’s a violent demonstration around the Tower: protestors with cardboard and cloth signs shouting and screaming and throwing stones at the Royal Guard.

 

For the last two years, there have been public demonstrations and acts of vandalism all over the city, that have ended with dozens of people arrested and thrown in jail for disturbing the peace.

 

The shadowy organization behind these revolts calls itself "Freetime" and has convinced the Low Timers that towers are somehow evil, that the government is using them to rob them of their time. That the government is accelerating their lives so that they can work twice as much as the High Timers, their time flowing twice or trice as quickly as on the upper districts.

 

Raven backs away, but too late: some of the protesters have noticed her red mechanic jacket and have turned on her.

 

A rock flies just past her left ear. Raven backpedals, trying to get back into the relative safety of the narrow streets, but her leg brace clacks and locks into place, she loses her balance and crashes into the side of the building.

 

The protestors are nearly on her. A bottle smashes against the wall behind her. The mechanic scrambles back just in time to avoid the massive club one of them swings at her. She fumbles with the brace and manages to get it working just in time to roll away from the dirty boot aimed at her face. But in doing so, she finds herself backed into the wall with nowhere to go.

 

All around her she sees the looming angry faces of factory workers, servants, and artisans. The rioters' roar, brandishing clubs and copper bars. One of them kicks her good leg from under her, and she falls once again.

 

She raises her hands to protect her head from the onslaught, but their blows never reach her.

 

Raven shudders, her skin tingles, she has the sensation of freefalling. WHen she finally dares to peek around her forearms, she discovers that, all around her, everyone stands still. She can hear her blood rushing in her ears, feel her heart beating a thousand miles an hour against her ribs.

 

Slowly she pushes herself up. The whole crowd around the tower seems to have stopped. Horses raring, muzzles open mid-scream, stones suspended in mid-air, rioters and guards paralyzed in various positions: fists connecting, feet raised in mid-step.

 

Raven swallows the urge to puke. Time doesn’t stand still, not unless the clock in the tower breaks down. She wouldn’t be able to move if this timezone had just stopped. She inches her way out of the circle of protestors and watches her surroundings more carefully.

 

Time is not completely still. It’s just moving a lot slower. Which gives her the time to escape the mob. She runs across the square, dodging flying bottles and raised hooves. While she’s at it, she snatches one of the stones flying at Miller’s boyfriend out of the air and leaves it on the floor.  

 

Once she reaches the door, the sensation of freefalling makes her knees wobble. The racket starts again, full force now that she seems to be at the epicenter of it. Across the square she sees her would-be attackers losing their footing, colliding with each other and looking stunned and confused. She pushes into the tower before anyone can notice. The door is heavy enough to keep most of the noise out, but not all of it.

 

The mechanic lets out a long sigh before starting up the long spiral staircase.

 

Sinclair explained that nobody knew who build the first tower. For a time the knowledge of how to make them seemed to be pretty popular since there are so many all around Arkadia. But at some point, that knowledge had been lost. Now mechanics know only how to repair and keep them from collapsing. “Our whole society is built around these towers, Raven.” Not only that but, if the towers disappeared, time would stop like it has done in all those gray timezones.

 

Without the towers, there is no time. No time is like being dead.

 

The door at the top of the staircase opens to a big platform surrounded by the slowly ticking mechanism of the watch. In here time feels like a soft cloak, a warm, loving embrace. The enormous gears and cogs and counterweighs around Raven creating the perfect symphony.

 

Unslinging her backpack, the mechanic lays her tools on the small workbench next to the door. It’s easy to lose herself in the familiar motions and ignore the nagging little voice at the back of her brain making her remember Sinclair and everything he taught her.

 

“I’m glad you came back. I missed you.”

 

Raven isn’t a woman prone to shrieking. And thus the sound that comes out of her mouth is most definitely not a shriek. She's just startled.

 

Her small brush clatters to the wooden floor. A man stands right across from her, dressed in loose pants and a shirt that’s slightly too big for him.

 

At first, she thinks it’s her boyfriend, Finn, but she blinks and doesn’t know how she could have thought that. He looks nothing like Finn. He’s broad and proud, his slanted eyes darker than Finn’s, and his mouth is thin and hard, his features are razor sharp and angular. Unruly curls falling around his face in a careless way Finn would never allow.

 

“What are you doing in here?” Raven grumbles, picking her brush back up. “This area is off-limits for civilians.”

 

“I live here.”

 

The mechanic rolls her eyes. Nobody lives inside the towers. That would be too much of a risk. “Yeah, right. Now go away, before I call the guards and they take your cute ass to prison.”

 

The stranger puffs his chest. “You really think I am cute?”

 

“Really? That’s what you’re focusing on?”

 

“Why not?”

 

Raven huffs and shakes her head.

 

“Ok. Out.” Raven blinks, and the man disappears… “I cannot leave” only to appear out of thin air sitting on one of the big cogs to the mechanic’s left.

 

“What the…”

 

“Why have you been away so long?” He’s hanging upside down from the big gear, feet propped on the metallic beam supporting this side of the structure. “I even tried to get you to come back by jamming the gears over there” he makes a dismissive gesture with a bruised hand. “But someone else came to solve the problem.”

 

“You tampered with the mechanism?” Raven is appalled.

 

“How else could I get the attention of a mechanic?”

 

Anger fizzles in her veins. “Are you crazy!? Do you have any idea what could have happened?! All the lives you’ve endangered?!” She climbs back to her feet, prowling towards the asshole sitting comfortably in the delicate mechanism that keeps the whole timezone moving. She grabs the guy’s shirt to pull him down and drag him personally to the guard. But her fingers pass through him.

 

She looks at her hand and back at him. He doesn’t look cocky anymore. He looks sad. Raven tries to touch him again, and again her hand passes through him like he isn’t there.

 

“I told you. I can’t leave.” His voice is but a small whisper now, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped.

 

“What are you?”

 

“I am a time spirit.” He tries for an upbeat tone, but it falls flat. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He used to call us Clock Spirits. But… why do you have your… The hair over your eye raised like that?”

 

“Clock Spirits are a myth. Nobody has ever seen one. And why would they look like cocky factory workers.”

 

He blinks at her. “I like what you do with the hair over your eyes.”

 

“My eyebrows?”

 

He shrugs and just points at his own eyebrows. “When you move them it changes your whole face. It’s pretty.”

 

“You haven’t answered my question.”

 

“We are not so fond of people. That’s why we don’t show ourselves often.”

 

“Uhu. But you have shown yourself to me?”

 

“I like you.” He shrugs like it's just that easy, and Raven is tempted to believe him, he seems so earnest. But she has learned the hard way that – except for Finn - everyone wants something and even such a small compliment comes at a prize.

 

So she pushes the blush threatening to creep into her cheeks down and huffs a dismissive laugh, continuing with her work. Out of the corner of her eye, she can keep a look on this strange Time Spirit, if that’s what he is.

 

As she moves around the tower, fixing and cleaning the mechanism, the spirit follows, always at a small distance, dark eyes intent. It’s both slightly creepy and flattering how he seems so interested in everything she does.

 

“What does a time spirit do anyway?” she asks after a while.

 

“We control time,” he answers like it’s obvious.

 

“I thought the clocks controlled time.” Raven sees him frown out of the corner of her eye.

 

“The clocks keep us trapped, doing their bidding.” The coldness and anger in his voice are chilling. He stands by the clock’s face, looking out through the stained glass, his arms crossed, shoulders tense, back ramrod straight.

 

“How?”

 

“I only know He made it so that we could never escape.”

 

He. Is the time spirit talking about the creator of the towers? Does that mean that every tower had a spirit? That they've been trapped there since the creation of time? And if she can talk to this spirit, could she talk to others as well? Half a thousand questions buss in her brain. Abandoning the pretense of working, Raven wanders closer to him. "How so?"

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“But you can tamper with the mechanism.” He had admitted as much.

 

The spirit rubs his bruised hand absently "I can do as much harm as I want... as long as I can endure the pain." he tries for his cocky smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "If I break the mechanism, I die.” He turns away and taps the glass with one long finger. They are high enough to see over the roofs of the houses straight to the gray tower of the stopped timezone where Sinclair is still paralyzed.

 

“That’s why time stops.” Raven whispers. “Because the time spirit dies.”

 

He doesn't move or speak. Looking out with such an apparent longing and sadness.

 

“If you want me to let you out, I can’t. I don’t know how.” And even if she knew, she couldn’t. If timezones stop when the time spirit dies, who knows what would happen if she let him out. Probably the same thing, since he would leave without looking back. He might be miserable, but she could never trade his life for the lives of all the people in her timezone.

 

“I don’t want you to let me go. Where would I go?” He looks at her with his big brown eyes nearly round.

 

“Then why…?”

 

“I like you, Raven.”

 

And it’s probably foolish of her, but this time, she believes it. Maybe it’s the way he says her name, perhaps it’s because she recognizes the expression on his face; has seen it enough times in the mirror to know what it means and be terrified by it.

 

The mechanic clears her throat, racking her brains to steer the conversation in any other direction. "How do you control time?"

 

The spirit shrugs. "It's easy. Like... A thread I can wave" He looks down at his hands, bits his bottom lip. And jerks away from the window. The spirit vanishes like a sigh. Reappearing half a second later right beside Raven, startling her.

 

"Don't do that!"

 

His smile lights his eyes up with mischief and his "sorry" doesn't sound apologetic at all. "Look here." he opens his left hand, where a tiny seed rests.

 

"Where did you get that?"

 

"There are nests up in the rafters. Sometimes the birds drop them." He shakes his head. "That doesn't matter. Look at this."

 

The seed looks minuscule in the palm of his hand. Raven feels heat coming off of the spirit, the caress of time gently changing lanes and surrounding the seed. For a moment nothing happens, and then, it starts to twitch. Slowly it cracks open, a small stem pushing out, little spider leg-like roots curling on the palm of his hand.

 

Raven watches in awe a little flower appear seemingly out of nowhere. Once it blooms, he blows softly over the blossom.

 

His cocky crooked smile twinkles with mischief. "A beautiful flower for a beautiful lady," he says snapping the stem and handing it to her.

 

Raven can feel her cheeks growing warm with an unwanted blush. Still, she takes the flower. “I should get going.”

 

His shoulders slump slightly, he nods. "Come back tomorrow?"

 

The mechanic starts packing her tools. "I'll try."

 

The spirit sighs. "I'll be here," and vanishes.

 

***

Over the next two weeks, Raven learns several things about the mysterious time spirit in the tower: he goes by the name Bellamy. He’s older than the city; likes watching humans and that’s why he looks like a human. He has shown himself to many people over the years and not always with this body nor as a he. Apparently, he chose his appearance based on “the companions he’s seen her with.” Which means he wanted to be a boy because he has seen her with Finn. Raven decides not to read into that.

 

 

The mechanic leans back against the headboard of her bed.

 

She's slowly reading the lengthy and complicated article about the riots from the paper she's nicked from Doctor Kane's office.

 

Raven has never been one to read. During the six years she actually went to school, she learned just enough to pass. The ragged old books were never interesting enough, and the lessons were tedious. Her interests were always with machines, mechanisms, and math. Books were for dreamers and who really could afford to spend precious money on newspapers anyway? Newspapers are popular only among the High Timers, but the protests seem to grow with every passing day.

 

Just yesterday a group of people in district 10 kidnapped a mechanic, beating him to a pulp and stringing him up from the tower, the words TIMEKEEPER = SLAVEKEEPER sprayed boldly at his feet.

 

The article describes the attack and the subsequent brutal arrests in great detail.

Raven reads every word painstakingly slow, trying to understand the reasoning behind the mobs. Because they all depend on the towers, can’t they see that?

 

She sighs. Ever since meeting Bellamy, with his unquenchable thirst for knowledge, his big slanted eyes full of wonder and his intelligent questions, Raven has found herself stealing newspapers from Kane's office and fighting her way through the long articles with their big words and complicated sentences.

 

In the morning, before going to work, she leaves the paper at the bottom of the winding stairs of Bellamy's tower and at night they sit together to comment on them.

 

Raven's eyes wander to the flower on the counter by the tiny slit of a window - just a ventilation hole, really. After two weeks the flower is still as fresh as it was when he gave it to her.

 

Bellamy has a lot of ideas about the angry mobs wanting to be free from the towers. Probably because he wants his freedom, too.

 

A knock on her front door jolts her back to the present. She pads around the narrow table in the middle of her living space and opens the rickety door. Finn stands on the other side, and her heart melts a little when he kisses her.

 

They’ve been going out for years, have been friends far longer than that. She owes him her life. If it hadn’t been for him, she would’ve starved before she turned ten or lost her mind and been so incredibly alone. Finn protected her, helped her and was there for her when there was nobody else. Whenever Finn’s around, all the loneliness and sadness disappear.

 

“Good night, gorgeous,” he smiles against her lips, backing her into the room and onto the table. The door falls shut with a soft crack, and he stands between her thighs, peppering her throat with kisses like an eager puppy.

 

“Did you miss me?” Raven is grinning too much to sound appropriately mocking, hands trailing down his back and nose buried in the crook of his neck. He smells of steam, coal and alcohol and some sour tang like rotten eggs just underneath.

 

His fingers start undoing the buttons of her shirt, and he pushes the garment off her shoulders with an excited growl. Finn nips the top of her breast, soothing the spot with his tongue the next instant. “What’s got you so wound up?”

 

“Can’t I just” his hand finds her left breast, the other scratching at her thigh, “be happy to see you?” Raven knows there’s something he isn’t telling, but they haven’t seen each other in a few days, and she’s looking forward to a tumble with him.

 

Sex with Finn is something that’s become extremely familiar. She knows the motions by heart, and even though it feels good, she can compartmentalize and try to identify that strange smell clinging to his hair and skin.

 

Raven knows it from somewhere, but she cannot place it. By the time Finn’s asleep in her bed, heavy arm slung over her waist, the mechanic is starting to get frustrated.

 

She sleeps poorly that night, and when she wakes up, it’s to the cracking and popping of oil on the rusty old pan.

 

Finn’s dressed only in his threadbare pants and the leather apron Raven uses to both weld and cook, and she finds herself smiling. It’s not the first time Finn cooks for her – not by a long shot – but lately, he’s been so busy, doubling his shifts at the factory, they haven’t had time to just be… domestic.

 

“Good morning.”

 

He turns to her, pan in hand and his goofy smile making his eyes sparkle. “Good morning, Rae. You hungry? I’ve made eggs.”

 

His scrambled eggs are the best she’s ever tried. “My hero.”

 

They eat in comfortable silence. But before the mechanic’s had time to actually enjoy this moment with Finn, the clock strikes seven, and she heaves a sigh.

 

“See you tonight?” Finn asks, crowding her against the flat’s door, lips hot against the shell of her ear. “At the tower?”

 

“Yeah, ok.”

 

***

 

The Director is still keeping her on the easiest projects he can find, having her crossing time zones to do cleanup and check-up all over the place. It serves the purpose of keeping her busy enough that she won’t have a chance to complain, but not enough that she won’t have time to think. And thinking is both a great asset and extremely dangerous, especially since she keeps going back to the one thing she’s trying not to think about: Sinclair.

 

Raven has never encountered a problem she couldn’t solve. There’s just one thing she cannot reverse, and that is death. But Sinclair is not dead, he’s just trapped in the frozen time zone. There has to be a way to reverse that, to pull him out.

 

“You look like you want to melt the mechanism, you’re staring so hard.”

 

Raven blinks.

 

She’s sitting in Bellamy’s tower.

 

There’s really no reason why she should be here other than Finn has stood her up for the third time in a row, and she was feeling lonely.

 

Bellamy’s good company, unobtrusive; fun to talk to; witty and intelligent. Of course he knows a lot of things, he’s ancient, but still, he has that sort of wonder about him whenever Raven talks with him. He’s always interested in what she has to say.

 

Bellamy’s curious about everything, especially what happens outside.

 

He's sitting with his legs crossed yesterday's newspaper open in front of him. The society pages are never all that interesting for Raven, but he likes them and the main event yesterday was a huge party in Alpha to celebrate Crown Prince Wells' twenty-first birthday.

 

The page is dominated by a grainy photograph of a beautifully dressed Dr. Clarke Griffin, standing beside her fiancé, gloved hand in the crook of his arm, a smile plastered on her face and diamonds sparkling on her ears and around her neck.

 

“She looks so sad,” Bellamy points at the doctor.

 

Something deep in Raven’s belly twists.

 

The mechanic is too lowly to ever be pulled away from her job to marry some wealthy asshole. And even though the prince seems like a nice enough guy, she knows the doctor is not happy with her predicament.

 

Still, to any outside party, Clarke Griffin looks like she's walking on clouds like she cannot wait to leave her hard-earned career to start popping out princelings. Except for Bellamy, who apparently can tell, even though Griffin's polite smile and soft baby blues.

 

“They’re moving the wedding up.”

 

“She doesn’t want to marry him” It doesn’t really sound like a question.

 

“How do you know?”

 

Bellamy cocks his head, his eyes turning towards the big clock’s face. “See that clock over there?”

 

Raven leans back to look at Tesla district – officially called district seven. The citizens have doubled it Tesla for being the birth district of the infamous mobster N. K Tesla. The tower is as sturdy and tall as every other, the glass faces pale white with big numbers and iron hands.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“My sister lives there. In terms that humans can understand: she was to be married to another Time Spirit when He came along. O loves… Loved her betrothed.” He points at the doctor on the picture. “This one does not.”

 

“It’s a grainy photograph. You can’t know for sure.”

 

Bellamy’s smile is soft, sad around the corners of his eyes. His eyes wander away from the mechanic and back towards the window. After a few moments, it becomes clear he has forgotten Raven is there. The mechanic can feel time churning around her like it isn’t sure how quick it should pass, or like it’s trying to do two different things at once. By now she’s learned that it’s because of Bellamy and his agitation.

 

Whenever he gets like this, the mechanic feels the urge to go to him and comfort him. To try and make the hurt go away. Which is why she always runs away.  

 

“It’s late. I should get going.”

 

He nods without looking at her, but time does a little heartbroken lurch in her direction. “Tell her I love her, will you?”

 

Raven shudders opening her mouth to say… something. But she blinks, and he disappears.

 

***

 

The mechanic ties her bike to the little ring next to the door to the Tesla District clock tower. It’s things like these that remind her that her friend Bellamy isn’t actually human: how on earth did he know she would get an assignment here? Was he so weird yesterday because he knew and was suddenly reminded of his sister? Or was it just the picture in the paper and her being here one day later just a coincidence?

 

She pushes the heavy key into the scratched up lock and opens the door. Climbing the long winding staircase is always a pain, but today is one of the worst days, each step sending painful shocks from her knee up to her hip and all the way to the base of her skull.

 

Still, this is the first real assignment Kane has given her since she got back to work and Raven would rather cut her own hand than not deliver an be sent back home.

 

She opens the smaller door at the end of the staircase and starts inspecting the mechanism

 

Ever since she started talking to Bellamy, Raven has been acutely aware of the fact that there are time spirits in every tower. Even though Bellamy has told her that time spirits exist differently than ordinary people, that they usually ignore them when they’re around because they’re just a tiny blip at the edge of their perception, sometimes Raven can feel them watching.

 

That sensation inside the Tesla clock tower is overwhelming. Wherever she goes around the tower, she can feel eyes on her. “I know you’re there you know!” she calls at some point, but nobody answers and Raven continues working on the delicate mechanism, trying to ignore it.

 

“Your brother sends his love,” she attempts after a while, throwing a surreptitious look around her.

 

Raven nearly misses the young woman shimmering into existence between the huge cogs of the mechanism. She’s thin and petite, with long black hair braided into a complicated hairdo. Her skin is pale and eyes dark and round. She doesn’t look like Bellamy. Then again their physical appearance is just a manifestation made for her to understand what she is seeing.

 

The girl blinks in and out of existence all around the room.

 

“What did you just say?” her voice cracks with anger and Raven gets the feeling that she should have kept her mouth shut.

 

“I said,” the mechanic repeats, because she’s not about to let that girl intimidate her, “your brother sends his love.”

 

“Love?” Her voice is hard as stone. She spits the word like it’s poisonous, and the savage flash in her eyes is the only warning Raven gets before she’s flung across the room.

 

“Love?” The time spirit doesn’t move. Or, at least, the mechanic doesn’t see her move. One moment she’s standing by the small door, the next she’s slamming the mechanic against the clock’s white face with such force, the glass cracks.

 

But the physical pain takes a back seat when compared to the feeling of time grinding all around her: simultaneously trying to go back and forward and staying still in the interim. Raven attempts to swallow the urge to puke around the hand on her throat.

 

The time spirit’s eyes burn, then turn completely black and, for a few creepy seconds, they disappear altogether. She screeches, her mouth opening wider than it should and razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the twilight of the room. The hand pressing hard against Raven’s windpipe turns into a claw with long black talons. The human form blurs into a monster, combining half a thousand impossible creatures into a nightmarish creature.

“Why can’t I kill you, you little worm!” screeches the monster, slamming the mechanic once again against the clock face. The monstrous head cocks to the side, the barely there eyes narrowing into glowing red slits. “Look how he protects his new toy,” the spirit spits, voice full to the brim with hatred. Raven slips from the spirit’s grip as it blinks out of existence, only to reappear by Raven’s fallen tools. “Just like he did his Traveller.” It paces like a caged tiger. “Love… He’s not capable of love. He’s a murderer.” The smile the spirit throws in Raven’s direction freezes the mechanic more effectively than a clock tower breaking down. “He’ll kill you, too. Oh, how he’ll suffer when he does.”

 

The spirit cackles. “Yes, he’ll kill you himself, and then he’ll be oh, so sorry.” Bellamy’s sister vanishes, her unhinged laughter echoing against the metal cogs. Raven flees, running as quickly as possible to the door and down the stairs. Her leg gives out from under her halfway down, and she rolls down the stairs, slamming into the handrail. She manages to pick herself up and keep running, dragging the bad leg behind her, trying to breathe through the pain in her ribs and the feeling of time rubbing the wrong way against her skin.

 

Raven yanks the door to the door open, still followed by the time spirit’s laughter. Her hands shake so much it takes her six tries to open the lock on her bike.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, as always this was unbeta'd 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting.   
> (yes, I know I have WIPS open left and right. But life has been weird for a while now. I'll get to them eventually.)


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